The Quiet Exit

For the last remaining G.I.s in South Viet Nam, Camp Alpha is where it all ends. Tucked away in an obscure corner of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Camp Alpha is a depressing, dehumanizing collection of waiting rooms and barracks, offices and endless queues, where exiting American soldiers are assigned before boarding a plane bound for the U.S. and home.

Partly because Camp Alpha is about as cheerful as a bus depot, there is no great sense of liberated joy among the troops in transit. "I guess that we are all happy inside," said one airman last week, "but the outside is still numb."

What numbs the outside is the tedious, hurry-and-then-wait routine of military processing. The soldiers must have their urine analyzed, their baggage searched by M.P.s and sniffed by dope-attuned dogs, and their bodies frisked before they are finally herded into Waiting Room A or Waiting Room B. There they sit restlessly on orange plastic chairs, staring at travel posters, talking little, some playing hearts, gin rummy or chess until flight time is finally announced.

Many of the men are young and married; some talk eagerly, some nervously, of rejoining their wives. "There's a lot of catching up to do," one airman notes. When two soldiers in fatigues finally enter the room to announce that military buses are ready to take them to their planes, the troops line up quietly. A few complain softly as a lone servicewoman is invited to move up to the head of the line. Walking out, another airman offers a cynical farewell: "Well, this is our last hour in the great Republic of Viet Nam."

Most of the troops make the flight to the West Coast in chartered commercial DC-8s and 707s that can carry up to 250 G.I.s at a time. Such carriers as Pan Am, TWA and Flying Tiger are being paid a total of $6,000,000 to aid the 60-day withdrawal operation. U.S. Air Force jet transports are also being used to help carry the 23,700 troops home. Actually, the job is far less difficult than the massive earlier withdrawal of troops; more than 70,000 men, for example, were pulled out in a two-month period early in 1972. All U.S. military bases long ago were turned over to the South Vietnamese forces, so there is no large dismantling task or mass movement of heavy supplies still to be done.

There are, however, the inevitable personal agonies that accompany troop departures. Many G.I.s and their Vietnamese sweethearts, some with babies, must decide whether to continue their lives together. The women can apply for "fiancee visas," but must marry within 90 days after their arrival in the U.S. or be returned to Viet Nam. The U.S. embassy in Saigon granted 1,511 such visas last year and recorded 553 marriages of U.S. military men and Vietnamese women. There has been no rush of new applications, however.

Even the American penchant for adopting pets can prove painful: the soldiers must either go through laborious paper work to bring their dogs home, find someone to keep them or have a veterinarian dispose of them. U.S. military authorities warn against abandoning the animals.

When the last U.S. military man has left Viet Nam, Camp Alpha will be turned over to the U.S. embassy. Its commander, Captain George Parrott of Taft, Calif., apparently will be that last man. He is perplexed about one final detail: "We haven't decided who will process my papers."

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